


Terminal Sky

by BoWritesShit



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoWritesShit/pseuds/BoWritesShit
Summary: He listens as the clock ticks away his minutes.





	Terminal Sky

If he was being honest, he had occasion to find himself astonished that he should be anywhere at all. 

It was a strange thing to think, but he thought it often enough.

It was a strange thing to say, so he never said it at all.

There was a wife - or there had been - and he had never said it to her. 

Certainly never to his daughter, whose life he had tried to be part of as much as someone like him could be a part of anyone's life. Most days he felt as though he was somehow hardly a part of his own life, a distant acquaintance who cycled in and out of his own presence, his vessel merely leading him from location to location, a human suit to carry the pieces that comprised him.

Most days he hardly thought about what anyone else might think - this was perhaps a key source of his isolation, but it had been intentional and necessary isolation, because if he spent his time thinking about what others thought, he would not function. 

He was not built like many others: he was not a social man, he was not charming nor was he much of a conversationalist, he was not friendly; he listened well, but in the manner of one who intends to learn rather than to connect, as he had not gotten the hang of connection. He had not gotten the hang of people, only manners, and sometimes he got the best of those as well, his frustrations too abundant to be overriden by the courtesy hammered into his unassuming upbringing. 

People regarded him as nervous - admittedly, they weren't wrong, but the ceaseless movements of his hands were less the product of his nerves and more the product of the world around him, the premature effort to solve some problem he had yet to be presented with, as though he merely needed to be placed in front of one and his fidgeting fingers would find what had been waiting for his intervention. 

If only the world would be more efficient, he could get to it all, like a factory line - it wasn't that he thought he might be able to solve everything in front of him, but he was loathe to not be able to try.

A clock moved steadily beside him, wholly unconcerned that the sky was burning because time continued anyways and that was all that would matter for it. From time to time, he could envy a clock, until he remembered he would go mad with a single task at all times, with the steady pace he told himself he wanted the world to function at - he was not built for that, either, no matter how much he wished he was.

Across the world, time continued anyways and the sky was clear and there was no column of smoke or pillar of fire, there was no hellish pit to stare down into, no minefield of contaminated graphite. 

Across the world, people were not breathing their own ending into their lungs or swallowing it with every mouthful of tap water or transferring it from their lovers' skin to their own.

He was not across the world, he was in Pripyat, staring out the casement of a rented room, in the only hotel of a city that would soon have a population of zero and his night had a fission sky burning away the years of his life.

He was sure he should feel something - grief would have been sufficient and so he tried to summon some but found himself only standing by a window with a sensation of blankness - not empty, but absent.

"What are you thinking?"

Valery did not startle on principle, but he felt his lungs jump in his chest and wondered if it was obvious. 

He visited himself long enough to see his own reflection in the glass, and then the reflection at his shoulder - from across the room and just barely within a doorway he had neglected to lock - and Boris' keen cool eyes met his, craggy gray brow set with his question.

For a moment Valery did not answer and by the time he decided to, both of them had worked out that he would not tell the truth, that it would be obvious he wouldn't tell the truth, and that neither of them would remark upon it. 

"Whether or not there might be any benefit at all in trying to sleep at this point." he lied, turning slowly so only his profile faced Boris, who continued to watch him, but he could not bring himself to watch him back. There were times that the other man fascinated him, but he did not have the energy to spare to be professionally entranced, so he kept his eyes away.

"Eventually, there won't be enough coffee to keep you going." Boris said, engaging in the small talk he knew he would have to in order to keep Legasov talking, knowing that anything deeper might make him too shy to continue.

"That would be why I switched to vodka." Valery replied, awkwardly giving his glass a side-to-side tilt, held carefully between thumb and forefinger, watching the contents shift and missing Boris' very vague amusement just as he had so many times before, leaving him unaware of his colleague's mutual enchantment. He looked up only when Boris left the doorway, eyes drawn to movement, observing as he crossed the room to the bottle and picked up one of the empty glasses - eyes on Legasov the whole time, Legasov feeling like some interesting insect, or more appropriately for Boris, an interesting weapon - before approaching him. 

He topped up Valery's drink, then poured himself one. They watched each other, saying nothing, exchanging only a nod of thanks before drinking, then turning as one to the window. Side by side, they watched the terminal sky and time continued.


End file.
